How to Get to the CCT TDI Magdalena Campus from Manila

From the South Luzon Expressway: 

Leave the expressway at the Calamba exit.  Drive along Real Road then turn right at the Calamba national highway. Drive along this highway  passing through the towns of  Los Banos, Bay, Victoria, Pila, Sta. Cruz, and Pagsanjan.  About 1 ½ kilometres past the Pagsanjan welcome arch you will cross a small bridge after which stands an Iglesia ni Cristo church building on the left.  Turn right across from this church and drive straight ahead for the next four kilometres.  When you get to the unpaved portion (landmark: Von Welt gate) the campus will be about 200 meters away.  After a small paved portion and more rough road, watch for the CCT TDI wooden gate on the left.   

Note: If for some reason you miss the iron welcome arch and come to the stone welcome arch, simply turn around.  The Iglesia ni Cristo church will be on your right.  Turn left on the street across from the building and follow the rest of the directions above.  

TEE Attendees Visit Magdalena Campus

Participants in Transformative Economic Empowerment (TEE), an international training session for micro finance workers, visited the Magdalena campus of the Training and Development Institute (TDI) of the Center for Community Transformation (CCT) to get an overview and feel of CCT’s ministry among out-of-school youth and unemployed or underemployed males.  TEE is a joint activity of CCT and the Ka-Partner network, a consortium of US-based organizations ministering to the poor. 

 The TDI campus in Magdalena, Laguna offers a two-year vocational / technical course called Building Construction and  Maintenance with competencies in electrical installation and maintenance, masonry, rough carpentry, and plumbing.  It is also a boarding school for a second set of students – male, former street dwellers between the ages of 10 and 19.  (The boarding school for former street dwellers is being overseen by the Visions of Hope Foundation, which, along with TDI, is a member of the CCT Group of Ministries.)

Ruth Callanta, CCT founder and president, said the training session allows the sharing of CCT’s best practices and stories,  benefiting the poor of other nations. The TEE attendees were from Sri Lanka, Peru, India, Moldova, Zambia, Kenya, Thailand, Uganda, and the US. The main theme of this gathering was leadership and vision, and spiritual integration in micro finance. Speakers included CCT Chairman Bertram Lim, Ruth Callanta, and social anthropologists Dr. Melba Maggay and Dr. Miriam Adeney.   

The founding members of the Ka Partner network are endPoverty, Five Talents, Hope International, and Peer Servants. 

After viewing a presentation about programs and services offered at the campus, listening to the testimony of one  of the students, and touring the buildings, many of the guests enjoyed some shooting practice with members of the campus soccer team. 

The main venue of the training session was the Tagaytay Retreat and Training Center in Tagaytay City.   

Quezon City Men Graduate from CTDI, Receive TESDA Certification

Twenty-six men from Bagong Silangan, Payatas, Commonwealth, and Batasan in Quezon City recently graduated from a special short-term course on carpentry and masonry  at the CCT Training and Development Institute, Magdalena, Laguna campus.  Except for two, the men  passed assessment tests given by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, have received certification from the agency, and now have a better chance for employment.

The men are  husbands, sons, nephews, and in-laws of CCT micro finance community partners.

Graduation day, held in Bagong Silangan,  was a much-awaited and joyful event for the men and their families since many of them had never completed high school or grade school.

The course was run in partnership with the Wholistic Transformation Resource Center.  A second group of 30 men will start similar training this month.

TDI Students Have Jobs on US Embassy Grounds

TDI students wait for their turn to be interviewed by
Engr. Rafael Ian Ilagan, building construction contractor. 

Tyron Sarmiento (seated, in white shirt) marketing officer for the
 Covenant Community Service Cooperative joins the pre-service
interviews. 

The students try on new safety shoes and reflective vest
a few days before they start work. 

Twelve students at the CCT Training and Development Institute-Magdalena Campus have been blessed with a contract that will have them working  at the US embassy from November 2012 to March 2013.  Five electrical maintenance students and seven plumbing students – who simply needed a place where they could get on-the-job training – got full paying jobs when they were hired by a building contractor who has a construction project on the US embassy grounds in Manila. 

After March they will go back to TDI to complete the rest of their one-year building maintenance course
which includes masonry and carpentry. 

The TDI curriculum provides its students  with the basic knowledge, practices, techniques, and skills they need to succeed in a career in building maintenance and combines this with several months of on-the-job training. 

The young men are sons of micro entrepreneurs  receiving micro finance assistance from CCT's Savings and Credit Cooperative. Many of them could have spent years being unskilled and jobless but with God’s intervention in their lives they have fresh hope not just for themselves but for their families too.

Rey Mark Pangilan: On the Path Out of Poverty?

Rey Mark Pangilan draws plumbing equipment in one of his classes at the Center for
Community Transformation Training and Development Institute.  

Farmer's Son. "I'd like to help my family," says Rey Mark Pangilan, 20, a new vocational-technical student at the Center for Community Transformation (CCT)  Technical and Development Institute (TDI)  in Magdalena, Laguna. This is the answer one would expect to hear from any of the 31 new students  studying rough carpentry, plumbing, electrical maintenance, and masonry when asked what they hope to do when they finish their one-year course.

A full-blooded B'laan, Rey Mark is the fifth of seven children of a farmer who plants corn, and only the second person in his family to study beyond high school.

Even  finishing high school  was not easy, he says. "I had to hike one hour from my house  every school day to get  to the nearest high school."

The B'laans are an  indigenous group who live in  Davao del Sur, South Cotabato, and Sarangani.  They are known for their colorful native costumes and intricate beadwork but at the same time are economically disadvantaged.

Rey Mark is enrolled at TDI as a scholar of the Visions of Hope Foundation, a member of the CCT Group of Ministries which has been working among the B'laans of Sarangani since 2003.  His classmates come  from other poor communities in the Visayas and Mindanao.  

Master Key. Technical and vocational education is seen by international experts as ‘the master key that can alleviate poverty.’  While many Filipinos look down on jobs that require manual labor TDI believes numerous opportunities are out there for those willing to work with their hands and sufficiently trained to do so. For instance, while machines are fast replacing jobs in factories and on farms, houses and other buildings still have to be built by human hands.  In fact according to the latest labor market study of the Department of Labor and Employment jobs as masons and carpenters are hard-to-fill occupations in the Philippines, while positions as plumbers are in demand abroad.  

Alongside  technical training and on-the-job learning,  TDI  provides classes, programs and activities meant to help the students grow deeper in their relationship with God.  Students  attend daily morning devotions,  Saturday worship services  with members or beneficiaries of other CCT programs in the area, and regular Sunday worship services.

So is Rey Mark on the pathway out of poverty?    If he keeps believing things can change for the better, if, by God's grace, he puts in the huge effort needed to pursue learning,  then his desire to help his family -- improve the quality of their lives, send younger siblings to school, and provide for his parents as they grow old --  can surely come true.

Former Street Kids, Future Soccer Champs?

Is CCT raising some future soccer champions? With God nothing is impossible!   Boys who used to live on the streets but who are now part of the boarding school program of Visions of Hope Christian School are getting trained in the world's most popular sport. Of course joining the national team and playing in high-level matches also requires daily practice, healthy habits, focus, dedication, and years of hard work.  

But who knows? One of the boys in these pictures could some day play for the Philippines.  Right now they compete against other teams in the town of Magdalena in Laguna.  Here they are warming up, stretching, doing drills, and playing practice games at the Magdalena campus of the Center for Community Transformation Training and Development Institute. 

The Binhi Junior Soccer team with German coaches David Kananizadeh and
Maximilian Alex Haubensak (wearing glasses) and Pastor Jun Tolentino (right). 

Photos by Michelle Taway